Why most brands don't know how strong they really are

1. The Problem: Brands Flying Blind

Most companies invest in their brand – in logos, colour systems, communication guidelines, and campaigns. Yet very few systematically measure whether those investments are paying off and whether their brand management is truly consistent. The consequences of this blindness are measurable and significant.

A comprehensive study by Demand Metric and Lucidpress (2016), surveying over 200 organisations, arrived at a central finding: companies with consistent brand presentation achieve on average 23 per cent more revenue than those with inconsistent brand communication.¹

The follow-up study from 2019, conducted among more than 400 organisations, revised this figure upward: up to 33 per cent revenue growth through consistent branding.²

At the same time, the data shows that most companies leave this potential untapped. Roughly 85 per cent of all organisations have documented brand guidelines – but only 30 per cent enforce them consistently. The result: 77 per cent of brands regularly produce content that does not conform to their own standards.³

Organisations with formal guidelines that are consistently enforced are more than twice as likely to achieve consistent brand presentation. – Demand Metric / Lucidpress, 2016

The greatest negative impact of inconsistent branding is not financial in the narrowest sense, but communicative: 71 per cent of study participants cited 'market confusion' as the primary consequence.⁴

2. What a Brand Audit Actually Reveals

A brand audit is not a superficial checklist. It is a systematic, multi-dimensional assessment of the entire brand architecture – from strategic foundations to operational execution. A scientifically grounded audit evaluates at least five core dimensions:

• Brand Foundation: Does a clearly defined purpose, differentiating positioning, and consistent value proposition exist? This corresponds to the 'Brand Identity' level in Keller's CBBE model.⁵
• Visual Identity: Are colours, typography, logo rules, and design grids documented and applied uniformly? A consistent colour palette can increase brand recognition by up to 80 per cent.⁶
• Tone & Voice: Is there a defined communication tone with concrete do's and don'ts? 90 per cent of consumers expect a consistent brand experience across all channels.⁷
• Customer Experience: Does brand perception along the customer journey align with the intended brand promise? 32 per cent of customers leave a brand after just one bad experience.⁸
• AI Readiness: Are brand rules structured enough to be processed and adhered to by AI tools?

3. The Research Behind It: From Keller to Häusel

3.1 Customer-Based Brand Equity (Keller)

Kevin Lane Keller published the concept of Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) in the Journal of Marketing in 1993. He defined brand equity as the differential effect that brand knowledge has on a consumer's response to marketing activities.⁹

The CBBE model describes building brand equity as a four-stage pyramid: from brand identity (Salience) through brand meaning (Performance and Imagery) and brand response (Judgments and Feelings) to brand relationship (Resonance).¹⁰

A brand audit operationalises these four stages. It identifies at which level deficits exist: awareness, associations, perceived quality, or emotional attachment?

3.2 The Limbic Map (Häusel)

Dr Hans-Georg Häusel developed the Limbic Map – a motivation and emotion structure model integrating neurobiology, psychology, and evolutionary biology with empirical consumer research.¹¹

The model structures emotions along three dimensions – Dominance, Stimulation, and Balance – enabling brands to be positioned within this values space. Brands occupying a consistent emotional field anchor themselves more deeply in consumers' memory.

A study in the Journal of Marketing Management found that multisensory, consistent brand experiences can increase brand recall by up to 70 per cent.¹⁴

4. Why Audit Regularly?

Brands change – not through strategic decisions, but through entropy. New employees, rotating agencies, ad-hoc campaigns, and generative AI all lead to gradual consistency loss.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust is a basic prerequisite for purchase for 81 per cent of consumers. This trust is built through consistency and destroyed by inconsistency.¹⁶

5. The New Dimension: AI Readiness

With the rapid proliferation of generative AI tools, an entirely new challenge for brand consistency emerges: when AI systems generate content, the underlying brand rules must be available in a machine-readable, structured format.

Companies that invest here early secure a decisive consistency advantage in an increasingly AI-driven communication landscape.

Conclusion

If you don't measure your brand, you can't manage it. The empirical evidence is unambiguous: consistent brand management is a measurable revenue driver with documented effects ranging from 23 to 33 per cent. A brand audit is the first step towards evidence-based brand management.

References